


Tiger In The Night

by Momokai



Series: sweetest touch, words like song [8]
Category: The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity, 晴雅集 | The Yin-Yang Master (2020)
Genre: Gen, I'll see myself out, Introspection, My Boy Night Tiger And His Potty Mouth, Night Tiger/Denial, POV Night Tiger, Qing 'Persistance Is Key' Ming, Qing Ming Collecting Strays Like Me Collecting Fixations, Qing Ming Is A Little Shit, This is so short I'm sorry, Unbeta'd We Die Like Night Tigers Family, bad life choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29672346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Momokai/pseuds/Momokai
Summary: It can’t be coincidence, or fate or whatever other crap the idiot spouts, he is being stalked damn it.Alternatively:A lonely Tiger meets an annoying idiot.
Series: sweetest touch, words like song [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165322
Comments: 7
Kudos: 61





	Tiger In The Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is so hilariously short I don't know why I bothered posting it tbh, but it's something for my boy Night Tiger and like. I set myself a 1k words-a-day challenge so... enjoy????

If he had a name given to him by blood he chooses not to remember it, because he gave it up along with everything else a long time ago. He goes by whatever anyone deigns to call him these days, neither accepting or denying the forms of address others stick him with simply to avoid constantly shouting ‘ _ hey you’  _ when they want his attention. The latest in a long line of labels tossed haphazardly in his direction by whomever he reluctantly shares company with is  _ Jun,  _ a name that he is positive is a joke but will respond to regardless even if it is by the simple fact he just...doesn’t care.

Because the life of a demon can only go two ways that he’s found. It can go in the manner predetermined for them by nature- and therefore likely be a lonely one interspersed with tedium and conflict, or they can fight fate to the last and inevitably meet a pitiful, miserable end because that’s just what being a demon brings you in this world, honestly.

Or one can go with the unique third option and just. Wing it. Take everything as it comes, laugh in its face, cry when it’s safe and spit on anyone who tries to put him in a neat little box, because he’ll be the master of his own fate damn it, he’ll steer his own ship even if it’s into a cliffside, thank you. 

He has been left behind and had everything taken from him far too many times to let anything so cruel as  _ fate  _ or  _ nature  _ rule his life. 

Even if it means he drifts from place to place, takes name after name and meets and forgets too many faces- he will not fall into the trap of tying himself down, because any kind of sentiment in a demon’s life will end in  _ suffering  _ and he learned that lesson  _ well.  _ He cut off his hair and cast aside his name at the end of it, and he will  _ never forget. _

He gets by through avoiding the bloody mire that is his kinds penchant for power grubbing and steering well clear of paranoid, weak  _ (fragile)  _ humans for the simple fact he possesses not the wherewithal nor inclination to get dragged into  _ any _ of it. Is it a lonely existence? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. It means he won’t have to deal with the pain of loss great or small,  _ again.  _

_ He wishes he wasn’t lying to himself, but he thinks that if he keeps repeating it, it will eventually cease being a lie.  _

Of course, keeping in line with his much lamented and oft cursed luck, it stands to reason that everything he has believed and decided for himself up until this point ends up being flipped upside down and tossed out the proverbial window by the wholly uninvited existence of  _ one man.  _ One incredibly confusing, irritating man who also happens to be a Yin-Yang Master that  _ (smells weirdly like fox under all that woodsy incense and tea he’s practically swimming in,)  _ does not seem to understand the concept of the words  _ fuck off  _ or in fact be in possession of any kind of self-preservation. Honestly, who asked him to put himself firmly in the middle of a fight that has nothing to do with him? Not him that’s for sure, but low and behold the idiot had stepped between him and a demon-hunter without so much as a by-your-leave and quite thoroughly saved his hide and made the bastard gunning for it feel three feet tall in the process.

Honestly it was all so spectacularly heroic and cliché he wants to gag, but he’s too grateful to even be  _ alive  _ after all was said and done to be so rude. He’ll do it later, when he’s alone and left to rethink his life if all it has amounted to is him being reduced to- not quite a damsel but definitely in distress and he is a  _ demon  _ damn it, no one is supposed to want to save  _ demons.  _

It doesn’t mesh up with any of his experiences thus far and it throws all kinds of annoying  _ feelings  _ in the way of his good sense. The same sense that has kept him alive through the abandonment of his mother and the death of his siblings after the fact- these two things being the foundation of everything he is today, and he does not appreciate it being shaken by a too kind and nosey by half Yin-Yang Master who would be better off minding his own business and fucking right back off to where he came from post haste. 

It’s not that he’s ungrateful, it’s that he just doesn’t get it. He’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop, because no one- human, demon or god does something like that without expecting something in return. Another lesson he has learned well.

But the shoe doesn’t drop, no matter how many times he runs into the Master  _ (it can’t be coincidence, or fate or whatever other crap the idiot spouts, he is being stalked damn it, who even stalks a demon)  _ and he is repeatedly and infuriatingly left disarmed and flatfooted after every interaction. The scent of fox makes sense after that, because only foxes can be that annoying ( _ charming _ ) and persistent  _ (concerned) _ . Eventually, he’s going to claw that stupid smile off his face, because he does not need nor want his  _ pity  _ or whatever other vague and preposterous notion of  _ friendship  _ he think’s he’s trying to sell with that demure, calming presence of his and the complete lack of any kind of hostility or disgust at his continued existence. 

And continue, his existence does. He drifts from place to place, takes name after name, meets and forgets more faces and runs into that persistent bastard at the  _ most  _ inopportune times. He is not a weak demon, in fact he would like to say he is quite powerful for his age- but there will always be the inevitable and sometimes insurmountable divide between strength and  _ experience _ . A tiger is only king of its domain if it is strong  _ and  _ wise. He is strong and he is fierce, but he is also still young, and there are more demons older and stronger than him than there are stars in the sky. 

So of course he is saved,  _ again.  _

At this point he doesn't know if he wants to find a forest to stand in and  _ scream  _ or just throw his hands up and ask the man with a confusing concern for him why he  _ cares.  _ In the end he does neither, and just resigns himself to the fact he is never going to be rid of him, and emphatically ignores the steady, reluctant return of  _ sentiment  _ to his life. 

Which is of course about when everything goes south, as it is want to, and he finds himself unexpectedly faced with a choice as he once again comes upon the Master sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, only to this time almost get it bloodied and his head separated from his shoulders for the trouble. 

Now, he will deny to his dying breath that he ever allowed himself to fall back into that trap, deny that he saw and emphatically ignored the tie slowly weighing him down after years of being left without one. What he will not deny, is that he will  _ not  _ stand idly by and let loss permeate his life again. 

Which is how, naturally, he breaks all of his own rules and sticks  _ his  _ nose where it has no business being, and returns a favor- and is later stunned and dismayed by the sheer  _ depth  _ of his unwillingness to see the idiot hurt, annoying face be damned. He doesn’t know what to expect in the aftermath, all he knows is that he should probably go find that forest to scream in now, because he has quite spectacularly tossed aside any hope of further denial and admitted to himself with his  _ own  _ actions that he is, unfortunately,  _ ferociously  _ attached _. _

_ When and how the fuck did that happen. _

He wants to blame him. Weird, annoying, charming,  _ kind  _ Qing Ming, but it’s his own fault. He shouldn’t have lied to himself so much that the truth got fed up and came around to bite him in the ass in such an ironic fashion. At this point all he can really do with himself is admit it, and own it. So he stops lying to himself, stops trying to throw a sheet over the endless chasm that isolation has burrowed in him and accepts that there’s no going back now.

And after it all, he decides to become  _ Night Tiger.  _

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Qing Ming: *Exists*  
> Night Tiger: WHO THE FUCK ASKED YOU
> 
> I tried to find some kind of visual reference for you guys for Night Tiger but alas, the best approximation I can give you is probably Luhan from EXO rocking the short white hair. 
> 
> Yes, I know the significance of hair in Chinese tradition, Night Tiger cutting his off is intentional. He is spitting on his mother. Who abandoned him and his siblings, who all died as a result. :) 
> 
> There WILL be more for this eventually, the same as Little Rabbit, don't rush me lol


End file.
